The 1994 song that reduced Tom Waits to tears: “It changed my life”

Tom Waits said hearing Puccini’s aria ‘Nessun Dorma’ for the first time in 1994 changed his life and moved him to tears. The moment stands out because Waits, whose songwriting is deeply rooted in blues, has often favoured older blues music over newer styles.

He recalled that Francis Ford Coppola was astonished he had never heard the aria and took him to the kitchen to play it on an old jukebox, with actor Raul Julia present. Waits described the experience as so overwhelming that he felt he was “turning blue”; the article places the story within his career of more than 50 years and 17 studio albums.